I keep on hearing The Horror Within Magazine has stopped the press but they won’t fix me just. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track.

Laughed? Not so much. I do have a secret theory about the Jack the Ripper murder mystery which has taken some 25 years to approach in my mind. As an enthusiast I love reading all types of Ripper material, fiction, non-fiction, and just plain make-believe books. My theory? It involves something quite different. I’m thinking outside the box. There is something recurring which shows up in more than one investigation and it shouldn’t. It also does on modern serial killer cases. Sorry, that’s all you get for now while I consider moving forward. Until then, MURDER RED INK is my fictional slant on the subject (and includes a fantastic Foreword by Casebook.org senior forum moderator Robert E. Anderson). Aren’t cryptic clues what fuel this subject?

That joke about brothers gave me real fits. I am down on dromers and I shan’t quit ripping them ’til I do get buckled.

Rigs says it in the latest novel of the Tales of Eclipse saga, GHOSTS OF THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE. Blame her, not me… makes a bunch of sense though. I have a brother, she’s onto something.

Grand work the last job was. THWM gave fans no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again.

Yes, now that THW has closed, Jack the Ripper’s Sandcastle is open for business again.

You will soon hear of my with my funny little games. I saved some of my original memes in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I can’t use it. My pen’s so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good luck (with next week’s election).

Once, I sat with my Great Aunt Hilda and she told me of days gone by. She was in her nineties, no small feat for a woman who had spent most of her years in the grip of the Twentieth Century. Allow me to sit with you for a moment, sip coffee made in thirty seconds on a Keurig so I can share tell a few things I remember…

I remember drip percolators brewing a fresh pot in twenty minutes or so, as the family talked (occasionally yelled) about steel jobs going to Japan and trolleys being far better than bus transit.

I remember Saturday morning cartoons and Abbott and Costello on good days, walking half an hour to cut my Grandfather’s grass on the very best.

I remember before we got a VCR and live prime time.

I remember the Car, the shark, and the Shining being scarier than the zealot.

I remember when my pay check wasn’t correct and there were real humans who had the sole purpose of making sure people were paid for hours worked.

I remember when the common cold was simply that.

I remember when we were the good guys.

I remember peace-time.

I remember when U2 sang about terrorism.

I remember taking a bus and going to record, comic, hobby, and book stores with my friends with two bucks in my pocket.

I remember libraries for more than toddler’s story time… and learning the Dewey Decimal System.

I remember riding my bike to an arcade and playing Pacman and Donkey Kong after exercising.

I remember the World Trade Center and not gasping every time I see it in a movie.

iTunes has proven an unbendable barrier for my publisher. He hasn’t been well yet has remained steadfast at moving forward with the upcoming projects from his most annoying writer…. me. BUT- NOOK version of MURDER RED INK has been established, watch for your copy of this redesigned cover and flow novel. Available possibly later in the week on Barnes and Noble’s stores/sites.

THE MOVIES!

Loved Jurassic World, but I AM an overgrown child that prefers playing with plastic dinosaurs all day long to any form of production. While we’re on the subject of movies, my first screenplay has been commissioned and begins production in the summer of 2015! If you’ve ever wanted to be in a murder/horror serial killer movie there should be opportunities. If you live in the Cleveland area watch for open calls for “DEADLINE.” Drake Productions, to be specific. There are subtle shoutouts throughout the script to the MCGHEE scifi-horror world. Not sure what will and won’t make it to the screen. You will be freaked out, terrified, and bloodcurdled. The script was based on an original short by Roger Priebe.

Last but not least, in the gap between screenplay and the first editorial weep of OLD FLAMES AND HEROES (a fantasy novel coming from TS PRESS fall 2015), I was able to pen four shorts. Hoping to announce where and when they’ll appear.

THAT THING ABOUT FEINBERG, WEST SIDE STORY, PLASMA BREACH, and SCHINDLER’S LIFT.

As always, all literature in my world is connected by dark crimson threads… for those of you that choose to follow them into the shadows (or they can be completely standalone). MURDER RED INK fans will certainly find FEINBERG of particular interest. A place known as “the final” to its death row population.

I sat down Saturday night and put the Sci-fi classic ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK on for my teenaged son to experience for the first time. Here’s a picture in case you forgot good ol’ Snake Pliskin.John Carpenter is one of my heroes. I like to think that his brand of horror-laced science fiction is one of the reasons I like to read and watch and write the very type. Let me give a brief introduction to the movie if you haven’t seen it in a while:

A terrorist (homegrown, working for a group that opposes government oppression) hijacks Airforce One and turns it off its flight path while spewing hate over the airwaves from the cockpit. Then the terrorist flies the plane straight at Manhattan… into the building next to the World Trade Center. The President of the United States was on board and managed to escape. The race begins.

The bad guys find him first. Oh yeah, I guess now that we’ve gotten past the shocking, eerie similarity to September 11, 2001… I should tell you that in the movie Manhattan was turned into a wall-encased, free roaming prison in 1988. It flashes forward way into the future; 1997. The government goes to extreme measure to rescue the President and a mysterious briefcase handcuffed to him. The extreme measure is a wild man named Snake Pliskin. The movie holds up despite the setting and technology looking a bit dated to my teenaged son in 2015. Now SNAKE PLISKIN… he’s an anti-hero that still rocks. Snake lands on top of the World Trade Center and all s%&t hits the fan.

I’ll end my blog for this Monday with a promotional movie poster from the 1981 release of ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK so that you can visit an old friend, just like I did. I remember it like yesterday, not the movie… 9-11.

Please Mr. Rothfuss, don’t erase women from history with modern opinion.

~Mord McGhee

I saw this post from a bookworm on facebook and their own comment added, “THIS MAN SPEAKS THE TRUTH.”

Well, in this instance Rothfuss does not speak the EXACT truth. He may be a great guy. Probably is. This post has been revised because I felt guilty being too harsh and it’s not TRUE just because it shows up on the interweb as a quote. I plan on reading his material and I’ve been told the article I read about what he said may have been spinning to spike book sales. That I get. I say silly s&%t all the time. But, for your evidence concerning women in Tolkien’s world, I present proof below.

Perhaps, the quote was wrong and the man in the picture saw the Peter Jackson fantasy movie based loosely on “The Hobbit?” If so…

I’ll keep it short and sweet. Pittsburgh’s Horror Realm Con invited me to their Spring Break Massacre. I’ll post some pictures at the end of the blog and sum the experience up with one word: HOLYSHITWASTHATAFUNTIMEANDTHEPEOPLETHEREWERESOTALENETEDITBLEWMEAWAY

Well, it’s a word…

I found out that the horror community is one of the coolest group of folks that ever lived. MURDER RED INK is the first thing I’ve done in the scary book category and I was new to the floor. Now, after having attended and being in the presence of greatness… I’m humbled, honored, and grateful for the invitation.

Dropping Payload is a story that is slated to be published and appear in the March 12, 2015 Issue of Perihelion Magazine. Scifi readers will find it free. I’ve been reading it for two months now. Excellent magazine.

And one last thought (again not naming names), F-U to my TV content provider for taking away my beloved “It’s Alive Show.” It’s a small world and somehow I was lucky enough to hang out for a few minutes with Hellga (a pic below’s been photo-shopped so that I’m smiling, because I’m a frownie sometimes) and Doug from the show. Though I haven’t been able to watch it on Saturday nights for years now, I retain my passion for this local Pittsburgh chiller theatre. I still listen to “Me Love” and “Make Way” by Deathmobile to “get into the horror mood” sometimes.

That’s all I got. Enjoy the pics from Pittsburgh. And for a bit more, I posted a video on instagram too. It let’s you see what the world thinks of writers FOR REAL. I didn’t even pretend to think I did anything worth while and still got kung-fu’d.

And I apologize, I didn’t get enough pictures because Pittsburgh kept us rocking!

PS. “M is for Matchmaker” on you tube. Watch this 3 minute gem with some of my favorite people. Not for the squeamish but DEFINITELY for the screamish!

“They’re Dead. They’re all messed up!” The Sheriff from Night of the Living Dead, George Kosana

Hellga from It’s Alive and my photoshopped smile

The Great John Russo

The end of the con. I was fortunate and didn’t have much to tear down.

No big deal, but the blog might be the place that suffers. I’m cutting back to blog once a month, maybe bi-monthly. It’s not because I don’t have material to talk about. I spent today in a Three Stooges marathon… I found out I didn’t like the Abbott and Costello TV show as much as I like their movies (because of rerun MeTV), I discovered Svengooli and his dumb horror movie theatre show (which is the sort of thing I love)… I have a 3 day convention appearance in March called HorrorRealmcon.com ‘s “Spring Break Massacre.” I’m reading Under the Dome and writing a horror television commentary for THE HORROR WITHIN MAGAZINE…

Blah blah b-lah.

So you see, I’ve crap to blog about. But I’m going to get real a moment. I see blog notifications ALL the time with people who have crap to talk about. I’ll be honest, I send them to the recycle bin most of the time. Not because it’s not interesting. BECAUSE THERE IS SUCH A THING AS TOO MUCH BLOGGING.

So… as it is now, I blog upon whim without a schedule. I’ll be choosier about the crap I discuss.

To update a few things on the writing side of things:

2 winners were chosen by goodreads.com and both are from the UK.

OFAH first refine is nearing completion. The characters have told me the whole story and now I need to capture the moment. This is my first fantasy novel and as my other work is proof I am rethinking the entire fantasy thing…

AN “official Mord-McGheeniverse” timeline has been produced and given to the publisher TSPress. It may be included in the sequel to Ghosts of San Francisco. The sequel to Ghosts of San Francisco has a rough draft at 50% and a title…

THE HORROR WITHIN upstarts in May…. my article has been completed and attached to a Pony Express messenger.

Swag for the conventions is here.

I’M READY FOR SUMMER! Winter can bite my…

That’s enough. Follow the blog if you like it, don’t if you don’t.

The camera pulls back… Jack scrapes the sand into a pyramid shape. The tide brushes against his leg and he crawls back a few steps. He turns, scratches a symbol into the triangular pile of sand. It’s two “M”s. The blade leaves a streak of red in the cuts. The tide pulls away and Jack swears he sees something move offshore. It has the head of a horse and the neck of a dinosaur…

It may not be what you think it means. Gamer is a very loose generalization. What I am is an active player of two online MMORPG’s. That stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. To hit a related point early…

…NO I DO NOT FICTIONALIZE ROLEPLAYING GAMES.

There are plenty of folks out there that do that type of writing in quality ways. I don’t. Have I used dice and played rpgs in the past? Yes. Although, to be truthful I was almost always the master of the game and came with a briefcase of my own material adapted to someone else’s rules. (We’re also talking about a couple of decades in the past).

What I DO write is captured nicely in a new comment given to me by TSPRess:

This is us. This is YOUR world. This is OUR FUTURE. He is Mord McGhee. READ and experience.

That’s pretty cool to me. It hits the mark because I like to think I envision changes that will come and let the people in the scene tell the story. SO…. what do I mean when I have admitted to being a Gamer?

I play Lord of the Rings Online (Currently on the Landroval and Arkenstone Servers) and I play The Secret World (On all three servers that I know about).

I don’t broadcast toons (the characters), nor do I sell books there. I play because I love the games. I love the communities. I love the worlds. If you run into me and figure it out that’s cool. I have a bunch of great friends, many of which are in the LOTRO pic above. In the past I’ve been active on the original Guild Wars and on Meridian59 (arguably the first MMO and still ground-breaking in the mid 90s). I am always up for giving them props to immersive and fun environments but I’ll leave the “worlds” they use to J.R.R. Tolkien and H.P. Lovecraft.

For me, I’ve promised to eliminate “Scooby-do” villains and moments and provide realistic visions of scifi terror and fantasy that damned well could be on our horizon.

Please Mr. Rothfuss, don’t erase women from history with modern opinion.

~Mord McGhee

I saw this post from a bookworm on facebook and their own comment added, “THIS MAN SPEAKS THE TRUTH.”

Well, in this instance Rothfuss does not speak the EXACT truth. He may be a great guy. Probably is. This post has been revised because I felt guilty being too harsh and it’s not TRUE just because it shows up on the interweb as a quote. I plan on reading his material and I’ve been told the article I read about what he said may have been spinning to spike book sales. That I get. I say silly s&%t all the time. But, for your evidence concerning women in Tolkien’s world, I present proof below.

Perhaps, the quote was wrong and the man in the picture saw the Peter Jackson fantasy movie based loosely on “The Hobbit?” If so, I understand how he could decide:

“There are no woman in the Hobbit. Who thinks this is f&%^ng creepy?”

~Patrick Rothfuss

I know nothing of Mr. Rothfuss, but I do know a bit about modern day perspectives and how easy it is to forget our past. History is a funny thing, we must be wary of those that write it. It shouldn’t be opinion suited to the changing times. As you read the blog there are pictures of the pages of “The Hobbit.” (Many of these pics are of the first three pages, in fact). I read the link to find out what the man in the picture above meant. The reporting said he expanded that literature has mostly treated women as Disney princesses and that there are NO WOMEN in THE HOBBIT. Now, in all fairness I read The Hobbit thirty years ago. With due respect, Tolkien’s time was before Walt Disney’s Ariel or Jasmine. I had to go look at my copy of “The Hobbit” to be sure, but I recalled strong women matriarchs among Tolkien’s hobbits and elves. I remember the humans trying to protect their women from Smaug. Oh, and the dwarves! Tolkien has mentioned that the dwarfish women are so secretive that they wear beards when interacting with men. I also recalled mention of a hobbit with a fairy wife? Belladonna Took! Heck, When I opened the book to fact check… BILBO’s MOTHER IS MENTIONED ON PAGE 2!

Mr.. Tolkien was born in 1892 in South Africa. His upbringing was a wee bit different than my own (and from Patrick’s, who is said to be claiming “The Hobbit” is creepy). Tolkien learned in school that women weren’t allowed to be actors during the renaissance as the job was taken by men wearing women’s clothing that happened to have voices that could sound feminine. He was taught that, in most places in the world, women have limited freedoms and couldn’t vote or join a military… or be paid as much as men for doing the exact same job. He learned that in some places around the globe women weren’t allowed to speak in public and had to hide their faces and bodies. Truth be told, not much has changed with the way women are represented. How we treat women today isn’t all that different than ever before. Maybe we kid ourselves into thinking it has? Maybe. Probably depends on the person answering the question. IT’S NOT HELPING TO SAY THEY WEREN’T THERE AT ALL. They were. Maybe not where we’d like them to be, but THEY WERE VERY IMPORTANT.

“The Hobbit” wasn’t about Belladonna, though the story mentions there is no shortage of amazing tales about Mrs. Took. This book was a story about a boy that never had an adventure before and ran off with a group of boys to play with swords. It’s a tale as old as time. Little boys don’t save princesses… they kill dragons. Disney has no lack of Prince Charming types, but little boys playing won’t ever be Prince Charming kissing a sleeping beauty if given the choice. They will always hit stuff and each other. Because boys.

Women ARE PEOPLE. G.R.R. Martin knows it and has said so publicly (when commenting on being able to write women ‘so well’), J.R.R. Tolkien knew it too, but this story wasn’t about Belladonna Took or Galadriel or Thuringwethil or Adunaphel or Luthien or Arwen or Celebrian (most of those names are main characters from other Tolkien books). Women have always been people, let’s not choose to cut them out of history because it doesn’t suit our modern Western sensibilities. Camelot didn’t have female knights. There were no female Kings in the Middle Ages. Queens? Yeah, they played a part that was strong of character in the time they existed. Please Mr. Rothfuss, don’t erase women from history with modern opinion. It is what we made it to be and we all have to live with the way the opposite sexes treat one another. On the lighter side, want to know where there is a lack of women in Tolkien fantasy? Villains, because men are dumb and usually up to no good. No famous goblin, orc, or troll women that I recall. Spiders, dragon, and elves are debatable… but they do seem to make babies.

So hit the >> button on your remote control and let’s review some movies I was able to see in the last few weeks. Some are new, some on demand. Five stars for the big screen version of INTO THE WOODS, a musical I’d yet to stay awake through. In all fairness, it was never live theatre but it was a theatre on dvd version. Next up BLACK WATER CREEK: The Legend of Sasquatch, sorry boys I won’t give a review despite being a sucker for the subject matter. I made it four minutes into the movie before <click>. THE MUPPETS:Most Wanted FIVE Fozzie bears! From the “sequel” music sequence to the “lemur” ending I was in love with Kermie and the gang all over again. Last but not least THE HOBBIT:BATTLE OF FIVE ARMIES. Maybe you didn’t like the bunny sled or made up love plots…. I don’t care. FIVE dead orcs for the conclusion. Sure it’s a fantasy based loosely on the Hobbit and I don’t give a darn. I’d love to see a special dvd edition that has “less” material and 1 disc. Cut out some of the silly from the three and make 1 fluid and awesome 4 hours movie.

See what I did there?

House McGhee hates snow

I create fiction and books are subject to reader reviews.

I don’t take reviews to heart like I did when I first began this journey but I still read them from time to time just to touch base with what people want in their respective reading habits. Since I work by word of mouth for a small press I have the luxury of deciding what I want to add or not add. I have presented a vision of 5 novels that redefine the idea behind what science fiction, fantasy, and horror can be and my publisher has given a green light. That’s it. But I take it all with a grain of salt because good writing is polarizing. It tweaks emotion and gets juices flowing. It also misses expectations and sometimes surpasses them too. I have been quoted in print with two missions: No Scooby Do moments and No Holding Back.

I appreciate your feedback whether you “get it” or not… Whether you “like it” or not… whether you think I do or not.